Mark Mills on our energy future and why it isn’t “renewable”
On this week’s Power Hour Alex Epstein interviews Mark Mills, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, on the future of energy in general and “renewable energy” in particular. In the last year and a half Mark has published two fascinating and widely circulated reports: “The ‘New Energy Economy’: An Exercise in Magical Thinking” and “Mines, Minerals, and ‘Green’ Energy: A Reality Check”. Mark brings a great perspective to energy issues because he a) has a strong physics background and b) he is deeply knowledgeable about how different industries, above all the digital technology industry, use energy. On the show Mark and Alex discuss: - The three ways to use unreliable “renewable” energy and why none them work well - The massive and rapidly increasing quantities of reliable electricity used by digital technology - Why every hour of video uses as much energy as driving 1 mile - How AI has a limitless need for energy - Tech companies’ contradiction of supporting unreliable energy and demanding ultra-reliable energy - The fallacy of equating energy and electricity - The limits of battery density - Why engineers can’t fulfill arbitrary political wishes
6 Aug 20201h 3min
California’s Energy Nightmare, “energy privilege,” and resisting oppression
On this week’s Power Hour, Alex Epstein interviews Ron Stein, author of Energy Made Easy and Just Green Electricity, about the decline of California’s energy system. On the show they discuss: - How much oil California uses and where it comes from. - The decline of California energy production and the rise of imports from the Middle East. - Where California’s electricity comes from–hint: a lot of it isn’t from California. - How California is shutting down 4 reliable power plants with no replacements on the horizon. - How California’s regressive oil and electricity policies his poor and middle class Californians the hardest. - How California can change its energy future. On the podcast Alex also answers two listener questions: one about “energy privilege” and one about the role of reliable, low-cost energy in fighting oppression. At the end of the second question Alex discusses how modern, high-powered communication systems are valuable for fighting many kinds of oppression, but how the current social media model is dangerously suppressive of open intellectual debate.
29 Juli 20201h 28min
False Alarm, the book the New York Times doesn’t want you to read
From Alex Epstein, host of Power Hour On this week’s Power Hour I interview Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, author of False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet. As I discussed in my review of the book several weeks ago, I think this is an extremely valuable book, on two counts above all. 1. It documents in case after case how the media and political leaders wildly distort the conclusions of mainstream climate research. 2. It documents in case after case how human adaptation can neutralize climate danger. The book was recently attacked in a New York Times “review” by the famous near-socialist economist Joseph Stiglitz. Bjorn systematically refuted the pseudo-review on this impressive LinkedIn article. On the show we discuss: - How trusted media sources manipulated a climate research paper to predict 187 million climate refugees when the number was actually around 300,000 (half the number of people who move out of California every year) * Why we always need to look for positive and negative impacts, not just one or the other - How many seconds worth of electricity all of America’s batteries can store today - The true state of solar and wind in the world today - How people in developing countries around the world demand “real electricity,” not the meager, unreliable electricity provided by much-heralded solar installations - The prospects for nuclear energy - Some of the crude errors of the New York Times review of False Alarm - How global capitalism will encourage energy progress even when specific technophobic countries reject it
22 Juli 202052min
Greenpeace cofounder Dr. Patrick Moore eviscerates climate catastrophism
On this week’s Power Hour Alex Epstein interviews Dr. Patrick Moore, ecologist and co-founder of Greenpeace, about climate catastrophism. Moore eviscerates climate catastrophism by looking at rising CO2 levels from a scientific and pro-human perspective–not the pseudoscientific and anti-human perspective that dominates today. Topics include: - Why Moore left Greenpeace. - The beginnings of the climate catastrophe movement. - Why Moore believes human beings would not only survive but survive better at far higher average temperatures (which would be concentrated toward the poles). - Why Moore believes that contrary to being in a Sixth Extinction, we are actually at an unprecedented time of biodiversity with no end in sight. - Why Moore believes “ocean acidification” claims are totally meritless. - The commonality among opposition to plastics, GMOs, nuclear energy, and fossil fuels. - Moore’s unrefuted theory that human beings actually saved life on Earth from terminal decline in CO2 levels.
16 Juli 20201h 3min
Alex Epstein interviews Caleb Rossiter on the campaign to silence climate debate on Facebook
Alex Epstein interviews Caleb Rossiter , Chairman of the CO2 Coalition. There is an active campaign, led by billionaire anti-fossil-fuel activist Tom Steyer, to convince Facebook to remove the CO2 Coalition from its platform. Some highlights include: - Rossiter’s decades-long work on African issues. - Why fossil fuels, especially coal, are crucial to African prosperity. - How Rossiter became suspicious of climate models. - CO2 as a warming gas *and* a plant fertilizing gas. - How challenging climate catastrophism hurt Rossiter’s career. - How the “paid off by the fossil fuel industry” narrative is laughable.
8 Juli 202057min
“I apologize for the climate scare”: Alex Epstein interviews Michael Shellenberger
Alex Epstein interviews Michael Shellenberger, author of Apocalypse Never, which hit #5 on Amazon. His recent article, ‘On Behalf Of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare,’ has been widely shared. Some highlights: - How Shellenberger went from being a renewables activists to championing nuclear. - Why Shellenberger decided to stand up against climate catastrophism after years of silence. - How modern environmentalism is a religion. - The real motives of most of modern environmentalism. - How environmental journalists misrepresent environmental science.
2 Juli 202054min
Michael Shellenberger, Bjorn Lomborg, and the Pro-Human Environmental Movement
Alex Epstein discusses two soon-to-be released books: Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger and False Alarm by Bjorn Lomborg. He explains why these are crucial books in the broader project of a pro-human environmental movement that rejects climate catastrophism.
24 Juni 202057min
